Thursday, 2 March 2017

Ballads of War 1x10 & 1x11

I've scanned and translated a couple of pages. Looks like our characters are in a tight spot...

About the first page, the dialogue between the Arbites serves no other purpose tan reenforcing the idea that 'something' is happening around Brent. Well, their whole intervention is oriented to that purpose. It's the most action-wise introduction of a character I could provide, hehe.

About the redesign of the Arbites, apart from the colour issue, you can see I took out the Aquila from the Judge's helmet and left just the laurel wreath.

I simply couldn't draw that

I'm taking some of the 'over the top' elements out of the visual design and bringing a more organic approach, I mean, something an actor could really wear if this was taken to a movie :P. That will have some impact in certain art decisions, of course, but I tried to keep it attached to the general 40K vibe, so these variations will be minimal.

The idea was to show the Adeptus Arbites as merciless iron fist law enforcers, provided that the Imperial law is cruel and merciless as well, careless about excessive use of force. Mantaining law & order is a really hard bussiness in the Imperium. So they are the grimdark version of Judge Dredd. Yup, a darker Dredd, if that is even possible. Any confrontation with the Arbitrators will most surely end quite bad.

Regarding the second page, there's not much to say. The first big panel seemed like a good idea to me, but I'm not satisfied at all with the execution. I wanted to show a general overview of a hive district, with action at different levels, highways intertwining, a hanging monorail... that kind of stuff.
However, it's not as half as chaotic as it should be! Now that I see it in perspective, I think I was betrayed by some kind of Escher-esque set of mind (I love M.C. Escher's work!), but that means things have some visual order, and the composition is way too clean, when in fact it should look gritty, crowded, dirty. The result is that it doesn't show what it was intented to portray, and I think it may become distracting in some way, as it draws your attention out of the storytelling for a while but adds nothing relevant to it. Anyway, I learned something about storytelling and composition, if by the hard way!

We also get to know something more about Vix in the other panels. Now we are sure she's not going to play the damsel in distress role. This is just a hint of what we can expect from her, hehe.

This is it for today, we have our people on the move! As always, you can find the previous pages HERE.

I hope I'm not boring you with my shenanigans, I'd hate to become a narcissist hipster commenting on my own anti-mainstream work!! :P

I'll add my voice to the rest as I think the big shot is quite well done too. Also, the organic approach is the more sensible one. Those large ornamental helmets won't give the wearer more protection and will only result in major neckaches.

Thank you! I still feel it needs more layers of roads and buildings growing like mushrooms :DAbout the helmet you're so right! Can you imagine how much should you spend on your physiotherapist if wearing that helmet with the eagle?